Ever since people have inhabitated the earth, we have used animals and plants to give us everything that we need. Animals are hunted and killed for meat and fur for coats, trees are cut down for wood and pulp or cleared for farming and ranching while plants are uprooted for food and minerals are dug from the ground causing soil erosion of soil.

Species become extinct through a natural process of evolution, as was declared and substantiated by Charles Darwin, but species in this modern era are becoming extinct for different reasons. The primary cause has become the destruction of habitat by human activities.

As different species evolve, most adapt to a specific habitat that best suites their survival needs and without this particular habitat or enviroment, the species may not survive. Human activities such as drainage of wetlands, cutting and clearing of forests, conversion of shrub land into grazing land and construction of roads and dams, have destroyed or seriously damaged habitats.

This causes habitat fragmentation or in other words the isolation and division of habitats into smaller areas. This in turn causes contact loss between populations, reducing the genetic diversity and making the species less adaptable to climatic or enviromental changes. This is inevitably leaves them vulnerable to extinction.